We know this was not the case, because when she did learn of Rand finding her, she went for the no-plan hasty escape. She had no contingency for Rand appearing on her doorstep.



This is wrong. Graendal has to ask Aran'gar whether Delana knows Compulsion. Clearly, she never taught her. Even more clearly, she did not have this prepared since Aran'gar arrived.



This again didn't happen. I won't be so petty as to detract from Sidious' theory just because Graendal didn't speak the words he thought she might use, but I do have to point out that Graendal never planned this, and so never intended to use Delana for this purpose.



Graendal did not figure out what was happening when Ramshalan arrives. She says so herself, admitting that "she'd been played" and that she only figured it out at the last second. She also wasn't making any plans with Aran'gar, obviously.



Obviously Graendal didn't take Aran'gar with her, nor did Aran'gar sensing saidin have anything to do with Graendal's actions.



Aran'gar is not safe, nor was Delana intended as a ruse or brought for this reason.



The end result - Graendal's survival - was correct, but that is not sufficient for me to grant this theory credibility. I will accord him points for guessing that Delana would be sacrificed to cause the vanished Compulsion, but the core of Sidious' theory was that Graendal survived because she had planned for this. I argued then and would still argue that this is absurd, and the reality agrees: Graendal was caught completely off guard by Rand's attack. Only the use of heretofore unknown True Power abilities (and I don't think we even knew Graendal could access the True Power before Towers of Midnight, I was certainly under the assumption of Moridin's exclusivity) allowed her to survive.

Sidious' conclusion was correct, but his reasoning was not, so I cannot agree to validate his theory. Because it was all those who opposed his theory who were correct - Graendal did not anticipate Rand's assault, Graendal did not plan for it. And Graendal would not have survived it if not for abilities that were at the time of the reasoning unknown to us.